


Forbidden Knowledge

by bboiseux



Series: CR2 Short Stuff [11]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Books, C2E011, Fiction will possess you!, Gen, Reading, Secret Reading, it's not angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 08:26:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14132106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bboiseux/pseuds/bboiseux
Summary: Nott has a book that she doesn't want Caleb to know about.  She keeps it hidden away and only reads it at night.  She thinks it is the key to knowledge that will change the way she sees the world.  But books can change you in ways you don't expect.





	Forbidden Knowledge

Caleb had fallen into a huddled sleep hours ago—a dirty pile of rags on the floor, hands grasping one of his spell books.  Nott laid with him, as was their custom, eyes closed.  But as soon as she heard Caleb’s breathing settle into the rhythm of sleep, her head jerked up and she slunk across the room.  In the wall across the way there was a barely visible crack in the timber—a perfect hiding place that she had discovered the night before.  Reaching in tentatively, quick glances back at Caleb’s sleeping form, she pulled out the precious tome she had hidden there and cradled it in her arms.

Silently, she slipped out the window and balanced on the ledge.  Here, in the moonlight, she could read as if it were day.  She opened the book and began.

When Caleb had started teaching her magic, it had opened her eyes to new possibilities.  Now, she understood that books could make the world look different.  Books could open up a whole other world.  Books could make you powerful.  Books could make you better than other people.  Caleb searched in dark corners for hidden treasures because he knew that even the best things in life could be lost, forgotten, or hidden under a layer of dust or dirt.  And what he found were books.

But this was something new.  It was something that Caleb couldn’t know she was reading.  She didn’t know what he would think.  He might be angry . . . or, worse, testy.  You never could tell with Caleb.

Nott huddled over the book and read.  At first, she delicately turned each page, her eyes moving slowly as she tried to decipher how the book worked, what stories and information the words told, how that could be used.  Soon, however, her eyes were darting across the page.  Each page turn was a violent act, focused only on getting to the next section as quickly as possible.  It was like the book had reached into her mind and held it in its grip, like nothing could pull her away.  She had only intended to read a little bit, but instead she read into the night.  She couldn’t stop.  The book was a living thing and it needed her to hold it, to comfort it . . . to read it, absorb everything it had to tell her.  She read with new awareness of the world around her.

Until, with a start, Nott realized that the sun rising above the rooftops.  Her eyes drifted back to the book, but she tore them away with a fit of will and snapped the book shut.

On the floor, Caleb was beginning to stir.  Nott dove into the room, stowed the book in its nook, and hastily curled up by Caleb’s feet.  Caleb tossed about a few times and then, with an incomprehensible mutter, settled back into sleep.

But Nott couldn’t stop the words of the book from running through her mind.  They were there, etching themselves in her brain, becoming all she could think about.  And as she fell into a restless sleep, the words of the book pushed themselves out through her lips.

“Oh, Oskar . . . .”

**Author's Note:**

> I am also [bboiseux on tumblr](https://bboiseux.tumblr.com/).
> 
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